Smokin' Yagami Lights
by Saulie
Summary: AUish, but only practically speaking. Matt meets Light for no good reason. Sometimes knowledge never manages to add up to power, huh?


(_Apologies for the Lengthy Author's Note: This is what I like to call 'improvisational fanfiction', meaning that I sat down to write it having no earthly idea what I was writing save that it was going to involve Matt and Light. That said…………This is the weirdest effin' thing I've ever written for the Death Note fandom. I'm never letting Matt and Light in the same fic again. Excuse me while I go hang myself. Don't bother informing me it makes no sense; it doesn't make sense to me either. I'm posting it as part of my Dammit, Matt Is Awesome Even When Not Making Out With Mello in Alleys manifesto._

_Title belongs to Drea, 'saeculum' on LJ. Gotta love it_.

_Another thing I feel I should say is that I didn't like how edgy Matt turned out in this one. Maybe if I'd actually edited he'd feel more comfortable to me, but he feels so, like…cynical._

_I don't know why I wrote this. I just sort of felt like it, I guess. _)

* * *

Mello would've said this guy smelled like money and looked like trash, face smooth and serious and swathed in influence and power. For his part, Matt just thought '_yuppie'. _Of course, they probably didn't call 'em that in Japan. He looked Japanese, vaguely, that sort of Japanese aspect that tried to slide into the West without being caught. Mister suit-and-tie. Very professional. Early twenties, Matt guessed. He— 

oh, hell, Matt had never been able to shake the Wammy's-instituted analysis instinct completely; he'd been watching people since he was six anyway. Alright, so: this guy. Just in the back of his mind Matt kept the ideas, that Suited-Yuppie was caught in between some mixed messages here—'cause his eyes were bored and fed up (Matt knew bored _really _well) and his posture casual and polite, and his face was schooled into such bland and inconspicuous approachability that Matt, who had grown up in the school that yielded L—

(L, that neurotic weirdo who looked like he'd slept a grand total of six hours in his life; that Mello thought was freaking Superman or somethi--)

--well, he couldn't help but think that this guy was Suspicious.

Of course, he probably wasn't.

No more than anybody else was.

God, though, in a world with fucking Kira you couldn't be too careful. Matt didn't have a hell of a lot of opinions on Kira, really, except a very stupid resentment

(_way to ruin Mello's life, good job) _

which was really kind of baseless; Wammy's kids _dreamed _about this kind of opportunity

(_to show 'em all what you can do) _

except for him, he never really gave a great amount of damn for showing off or catapulting himself into intellectually exciting hazards, but, whatever. Anyway. That was probably why he was bored so often. He was bored as all get-out to be watching this guy—this guy who was right outside like Matt was, except Matt was out to smoke a cigarette, and this guy was leaning against the wall for no apparent reason except to…

The guy sighed unexpectedly, then grimaced, and then the grimace vanished so fast Matt could've sworn it'd never been there.

Matt tried to pin down what it was about him that felt familiar; why he was even wasting his time (like he had anything to do anyway? ha!) thinking in his direction, and then he had it: smart. Really, really smart. It was kind of a…vibe, like, "Hello, I'm doing an inordinate amount of thinking over here," but _sneaky _about it. Familiar, because, well, he _had _been a Wammy's kid. Where everyone was smart like this. Out in the…what, real world? people were more stupid. You didn't get the Intelligence! vibe.

It would've made him wary if he'd been in the mood to care, it really would've.

As things stood. He was bored. _So _bored.

…didn't quite have the motivation to move, though. He watched the smoke from his third cigarette rise lazily into the air, dissolving into overcast skies. And he thought with a smirk that was all his: _have some carbon dioxide, bitch. _

--he realized he was in kind of a bad mood and wondered why that was.

The restlessness, maybe. Stupid restless sensations shuffling their feet and saying _do something, do something _and running like hell when he asked, annoyed, _like what? _Except he had pointedly ignored ambition for years so it wasn't like it was a new idea. He'd looked ambition in the eyes and seen something unappealing; something scary. So he shouldn't've—

He sighed, too.

Smart guy glanced at him.

He glanced back.

"Hey," he said. "What's up?"

--That was definitely the surprised look of someone not used to looking surprised. It almost reminded him of—nah; not _quite. _

"…Not much," said smart guy evenly.

It smelled like cement and fries and someone's old coffee out here and there was something about this…person, with whom Not Much was going on, that seemed really out of place. Like he was outlined carefully in black marker. What, whatever the hell _that _was supposed to mean.

--God, he really _was _bored.

Between them; one, two, three, four, five squares of concrete that stretched to the curb before disappearing. The street was busy and the cars were pumping out exhaust. Matt sometimes wondered exactly which noxious fumes were gonna kill him.

"Got a light?"

Smart guy blinked. "I'm sorry?"

"A light. You know." He twirled his fifth cigarette between his fingers, raised an eyebrow.

"—oh. No, I don't. Sorry."

Matt shrugged. "'S fine. I'm just lazy; I think I've got one—somewhere, aah, hang on, I didn't feel like looking for it." (that vest had a lot more pockets than it looked like it did.) "—ah, here." The flame clicked briefly; disappeared. "You don't smoke?"

"It isn't healthy," said smart guy shortly.

"Well—no," Matt conceded. Pretty much everyone knew that by now.

(this was as much risk as he got, pretty much; defying the orders of the surgeon general--)

"You could get cancer," the guy went on, "or—"

So _earnest! _Weird. Time to interrupt. "I _could, _but what's it to you?"

A shrug—a different kind. "I just don't think that anyone should die who doesn't have to."

"Oh?" –Matt knew where he got this sardonic drawl, or half of it, but he tried not to think about that. "Who has to?"

"…That's quite a question."

"I take it you're not into the whole Kira thing, then?" –oh why, why, _why _was he asking about this? Hadn't he sworn off even _thinking _about it? …Well, that hadn't worked. But still. Best to goddamn well keep your head down, and here he was—

"I'm never sure what to think about it." He looked thoughtful. "I mean, it's wrong to kill people, but—"

_Wonder what Mello'd say to that, _thought Matt wryly.

"—but also," the guy was continuing, "Kira is only punishing those who do wrong things…so it doesn't seem _unjust, _exactly. I suppose it depends on what people desire as a whole."

_Punishing?_

"Punishing?" Matt said aloud.

"That is the general theory, isn't it?" He looked a bit taken aback. "I mean, considering all of Kira's victims have been perpetrators of criminal acts; that just doesn't seem very arbitrary. Most likely Kira believes it's punishment, at any rate…"

"Probably," Matt acknowledged. "Alright." A long drag on his cigarette, then—"God, though, wouldn't it be funny if it was?"

"I'm sorry; was _what?" _

"Arbitrary. Y'know?" laughing, honest-to-God _laughing _at the idea. "Like, this whole idea, you know, Kira, it gets presented as judging and justice, but that's how it was played from the _beginning—_maybe Kira just cottoned on for the hell of it." All right, so the laughter was a little mordant, but it was _something. _"Maybe he started because he was bored."

"…That doesn't seem very likely to be true."

"I know, I know. I'm just saying—damn." Matt blew some more toxins into the atmosphere. "It'd be funny if it _was. _I always thought," he added, as an afterthought, "even in the media, that what the Kira case really lacked was a sense of humor."

(déjà vu; _I always thought that what Wammy's really lacked was--) _

"I never thought about that," said the guy.

Really, it didn't look like it. He didn't look like someone who thought about humor a whole hell of a lot. But at least he admitted it. Far cry from charisma, in Matt's book, but then again Matt had weird standards. Looks like this guy had, no doubt Mr. Suit was someone with a whole host of infatuated girls at his beck and call. He was attractive, Matt supposed. In a very classical way, a sort of Little Lord Fauntleroy transplant to some wealthy suburb.

…No, wait.

Matt had always had half-decent intuition—nothing like Mello's, but detached enough to be twice as effective—and he was thinking with a strange, recluctant interest things like

_intense, right? More than he _

and

_Sleazebag. Definitely. Sleazebag. _

So polite, considering Matt's idea.

"What's your name?" Matt asked for the hell of it.

"Light." He extended a friendly hand. "Light Asahi."

_Bond. James—_oh, never mind. "I'm Matt."

Light Asahi shook hands like he was closing an international trade deal.

_Practice makes perfect, _thought Matt.

"Nice to meet you," he added.

"Likewise, Matt."

--and, they let go.

Light smiled, the kind of smile that was so sincere it was almost insipid.

Matt grinned unsteadily.

_What is it about this guy that freaks me out? _

Stupid. Definitely not anything. Wammy's-induced paranoia. (Perception?)

"Do you go to college around here?"

"Nah." Matt rolled his eyes. "Too lazy. I've got a job down the road—that gas station, you know—"

"At the corner of Second and Pine?"

"Yeah, that one. Do you?"

"Do I what?"

"Go to college around here."

"No. I am on exchange, actually, from Touou University in Japan."

"Japan, huh?" Matt whistled, unsurprised. "That's pretty far."

"Yes, it is." A small laugh. "Believe me, it's difficult to forget. There are some things that are the same, though…"

"…that so," said Matt, and didn't ask what.

Light nodded. "People are people wherever you go, I suppose."

And there were about _ninety _different ways that Matt could've taken _that. _

"…You speak English really well," said Matt pointlessly.

"Thank you."

Silence.

"Did you ever—" …_Jesus, I can't believe I almost fucking asked that question. What's wrong with me? _

"…Did I what?" asked Light pleasantly.

"Never mind."

"All right," said Light, again suffused with amiability.

"…Got a girlfriend back home?"

Light blinked. "I'm sorry?"

"Just making conversation, sheesh." Matt rolled his eyes, but offered a half-grin. "I asked if you had a girlfriend back home. Smart guy like you, you know, I'd think…"

"Yes, I do." Light's answer was smooth, with just the right amount of affection.

"You must miss her a lot, huh?"

"Yes."

--Had he paused before saying that?

"How'd you two meet?" Matt asked out of boredom.

A small smile. "Back when I started college. She really stood out, you know?"

Matt didn't, exactly—but then again he guessed he sort of did. He wasn't much for romance. The people he liked best stuck out like sore thumbs, though, come to think of it. Why _was _that? It was stupid to stand out too much. Likely to get in trouble, looking like that, in a world like this. His question—"What's her name?"—got swallowed by a passing propane truck and he had to repeat it.

Light replied, "Kiyomi."

He fought back against the urge to think _object, object, object, _'cause who was he to say what someone's voice sounded like? Fixating on stupid things, that's what he was doing. Whoever the hell Kiyomi was—

_Object. _

--no, a _person, _this Light Asahi's girlfriend back in Japan, he was sure that she was normal and Light was normal and everything was normal and, honestly, fuck the instincts. Where did the instincts you got from Wammy's get you, huh? They hadn't—

_What you don't know can't—_

That wasn't true.

_What you _do _know can—_

But that was.

Damned if he was going to end up like L, "Well, I'd better get going," caught up in misgivings and thought, "nice meeting you," that's what he thought as he walked away.

Mello gave him a lot of names later. He always thought 'Takada'. Picked up the British habit of last names, talking like a newspaper article (impersonal) moving nominal chess pieces (obituaries?), stuff like—

_Takada. _

_Yagami. _

(was he gonna get one of those?)

At one point, at the second-to-last point: a smile flashed through his head and a given name or two, sure, but it wasn't like he had the fucking time. Met a lot of people in this world, he had. Some mattered. Some didn't.

Some did---


End file.
